Renaming Dundas Street maybe not the best, or most important, gesture

Three ex-mayors of Toronto are calling on current mayor, Olivia Chow, to rethink and reverse the motion passed by council a couple of years ago to re-name Dundas Street in Toronto, on the grounds that Henry Dundas was a bad man and responsible for extending the slave trade.

Unfortunately, like so many of these things, it's not as simple as that. Dundas was actually a fervent abolitionist, and a strong supporter of William Wilberforce, who sought to abolish the slave trade in late 18th century Britain. In 1778, Dundas took up the case of a runaway slave, Joseph Knight, winning an appeal to the Law Lords of Scotland which resulted in the freeing of not only Knight but all enslaved persons in Scotland.

Where his record becomes possibly mixed - and certainly murky - is when he moved an amendment to Wilberforce's original 1791 abolition bill in Britain's parliament, which called for "immediate" abolition of slavery, to one calling for "gradual" abolition. Anti-Dundas-ers argue that this resulted in many thousands more slaves in the succeeding fifteen years than might otherwise have been the case.

What this view misses, though, is that Wilberforce's original bill had already been roundly defeated in parliament (by a margin of 163-88 - an encyclopedia check confirms this). So, this was an attempt by the wily politician Dundas to get the bill passed, and it might have been his amendment that would ultimately allow the slave trade to be abolished in Britain at all, albeit slower than either he or Wilberforce would have liked. As it happens, even that amended motion was defeated in the House of Lords anyway and did not go forward (so, arguably, NO additional slaves were captured as a result of Dundas' amendment anyway).

So, it seems that Henry Dundas could be described as one of a small number of world leaders on abolition in the late 18th century (as, incidentally, was John Graves Simcoe, another 18th century British politicians with links to Toronto). Instead, he is being excoriated by well-meaning but, I believe, misguided anti-racism campaigners.

Taking Dundas' name off the street - and a whole litany of other buildings, signs, statues, companies, parks, subways, even towns - might make a lot of sense to many people (including, apparently, Mayor Chow), although interestingly Mississauga, just next door, voted NOT to change the road's name (the same road!)

It would be an extremely expensive exercise in political correctness, although sometimes that does need to be done, expensive or not. But in this case, it seems it may not even be justified in theoretical or historical terms. Certainly, there are much more important, concrete and cost-effective things that can be done to help today's Black population. And the estimated $8.6 million bill (plus the added cost to businesses, householders, etc) at a time when the city is finding it particularly hard to make ends meet, seems like bad timing to say the least.

The three well-respected ex-mayors - Art Eggleton, David Crombie and John Sewell - are questioning the practicality of the move, and also the research behind it. And frankly, I think they may be right.